The original Pixelbook's 12.3-inch QHD display has large bezels around it for better grip in tablet mode.

Valentina Palladino

Among the new hardware launched this week at IFA in Berlin are a couple of premium Chromebooks. Lenovo's $600 Yoga Chromebook brings high-end styling and materials to the Chromebook space, along with well-specced internals and a high quality screen. Dell's $600 Inspiron Chromebook 14 has slightly lower specs but is similarly offering better styling, bigger, better quality screens, and superior specs to the Chromebook space.

These systems join a few other premium Chromebooks already out there. HP's Chromebook x2 is a $600 convertible hybrid launched a few months ago, and Samsung has had its Chromebook Plus and Pro systems for more than a year now. And of course, Google's Pixelbook is an astronomically expensive Chrome OS machine.

These systems should cause ripples in Redmond.

Most Chrome OS systems are cheap: plastic instead of metal; TN displays instead of IPS; screen resolution that felt cramped and low a decade ago; inexpensive ARM processors rather than more powerful and pricier Intel ones. In a lot of regards, Chromebooks are hitting the same price points—with the same compromises—as netbooks did in the mid-2000s. This has given Chromebooks great appeal in the K12 education market, where the low price and almost disposable nature of the devices makes them a good match for careless student users.

But these $600 machines aren't aimed at those same students. Lenovo reps told us that its new Chromebook was developed because the company was seeing demand for Chromebooks from users with a bit more disposable income. For example, new college students that had used Chrome OS at high school and families who wanted the robustness Chrome OS offers are looking for machines that are more attractive, use better materials, and are a bit faster and more powerful. The $600 machines fit that role.

And that's why Microsoft should be concerned. This demand shows a few things. Perhaps most significantly of all, it shows that Chrome OS's mix of Web applications, possibly extended with Android applications, is good enough for a growing slice of home and education users. Windows still has the application advantage overall, but the relevance of these applications is diminishing as Web applications continue to improve. A browser and the Web are sufficient to handle the needs of a great many users. No Windows necessary, not even to run the browser.

Second, this demand makes clear that exposure to Chrome OS in school is creating sustained interest in, and even commitment to, the platform. High school students are wanting to retain that familiar environment as they move on. The ecosystem they're a part of isn't the Windows ecosystem.

Finally, it also shows that Chrome OS's relatively clean-slate approach (sure, it's Linux underneath, but it's not really being pushed as a way of running traditional Linux software) has advantages that are appealing even to home users. The locked down, highly secure Chrome OS machines require negligible maintenance while being largely immune to most extant malware. And the platform's cloud syncing means that even chores like backups can be largely avoided. Microsoft may be trying to offer the same with Windows, in particular Windows 10 S-Mode, but it's going to take a rather more radical change to Windows to really rival Chrome OS in this regard.

Not just bad for Windows

Again, this is bad news for Windows. Windows' position in the consumer space has already been vastly eroded by rise of the smartphone and the subsequent loss of the smartphone market to Android and iOS, but Chrome OS's expansion beyond K12 education into both college and home environments means that Windows' home turf—the PC—is coming under attack. Windows' traditional third party application advantages are in many situations irrelevant at best, and downright liabilities at worst. If Windows were still the place to run a browser, it could stick around in these consumer markets. But if all you want to do is run a browser, Chrome OS undoubtedly has advantages over Windows.

In time this will percolate into the corporate space, too. It won't be immediate, as the corporate world has a lot more inertia to overcome, but when these college students take the next step in their lives and get jobs, that preference for Chrome OS isn't going to disappear. It might take a while for these people to be in decision-making roles, but they'll get there in time, and they won't have the same default, almost reflexive preference for Windows that's currently the norm. Chrome OS will start making inroads on the corporate desktop.

The consumer space and enterprise are not cleanly separated discrete markets. One influences the other...

The naive response to this is to say that it doesn't matter; Microsoft understands, after all, that Windows is in a difficult position, and that's why the company is prioritizing the cloud and its enterprise offerings. But this ignores the interconnectedness both of Microsoft's offerings, and of Google's.

Those Chrome OS users likely aren't just using Chrome OS, after all. They're probably also using Google Apps. Mainstream productivity, one of Microsoft's major cash cows, is being handled by Google's online services—maybe not for every student, every time, but for a chunk of them. That preference, too, will only spread: no longer tied to the desktop Office apps, Office 365 becomes much less appealing or interesting, and Google's suite will be the one with the familiarity and experience edge. Key elements of Microsoft's cloud business will be undermined, so it's not just Windows that loses out. The contagion likely spreads beyond, too: Microsoft's reduced visibility can only make selling other cloud services such as Azure that bit harder.

The consumer space and enterprise are not cleanly separated discrete markets. One influences the other, and the loss of mindshare on one side can diminish reach on the other side.

Thus far Microsoft's main response appears to have been Windows 10 S Mode, running on netbook-priced PCs, and perhaps the Surface Go (though a Surface Go with a keyboard cover is much more expensive than the cheap Chromebooks, and starting to rival these more expensive ones). But Windows itself remains a liability in this regard. Windows 10 S machines simply aren't as tightly restricted as Chrome OS systems. They have more ways to go wrong.

For now, Chrome OS's success seems limited and fairly US-centric. If it remains that way, then the knock-on effects in both consumer and enterprise spaces should be reduced. Nonetheless, this kind of development isn't just bad news for Microsoft's position in the consumer market; it's bad news across Microsoft's entire business.

As long as people & businesses pay office365 subscription, does it really matter so much?

Peter is predicting that won't last forever. This is the relevant piece of the article:

ars wrote:

Mainstream productivity, one of Microsoft's major cash cows, is being handled by Google's online services—maybe not for every student, every time, but for a chunk of them. That preference, too, will only spread: no longer tied to the desktop Office apps, Office 365 becomes much less appealing or interesting, and Google's suite will be the one with the familiarity and experience edge.

As long as people & businesses pay office365 subscription, does it really matter so much?

From the article:

Quote:

Those Chrome OS users likely aren't just using Chrome OS, after all. They're probably also using Google Apps. Mainstream productivity, one of Microsoft's major cash cows, is being handled by Google's online services—maybe not for every student, every time, but for a chunk of them. That preference, too, will only spread: no longer tied to the desktop Office apps, Office 365 becomes much less appealing or interesting, and Google's suite will be the one with the familiarity and experience edge. Key elements of Microsoft's cloud business will be undermined, so it's not just Windows that loses out. The contagion likely spreads beyond, too: Microsoft's reduced visibility can only make selling other cloud services such as Azure that bit harder.

Microsoft's unspoken motto, until the end of the Steve Ballmer era, has been: "Dear consumers; we don't give damn about you." Nadella has done little to recover from it, although please bear in mind that "little" is relative; the predicament into which it has fallen is deep enough to accommodate the behemoth that is Microsoft.

Anyway, Mr. Bright, why would you write "a dangerous development for Microsoft"? Since Microsoft doesn't care about you, why do you care about Microsoft? Focus on whether it is a good development for you ... and me.

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Because its a...wait for it...dangerous development for Microsoft? No company "cares" for you directly, and i'm not really sure what that even means.

Competition is good for you and me, and in a world without Microsoft there is just Google. That wouldn't be good for anybody.

The issue with this premise is it ignores Google Apps being in flux, with changing interfaces and functions, and only best efforts uptime. Google has a way to go to offer dependable enterprise services.

This is all dependant on Google maintaining its good will with its data sources and advertising targets, better known as its user base, something it does not seem to be overly focused on as it seeks to destroy Microsoft, given the recent events where it has done some bad stuff.This overiding aim is causing it to forget that the only reason you get were you are is becuse of your customers, as soon as they have a good enough reason and see an opportunity to move to something else they will especially if you treat them soddily, MS got away with it for years but based by regulators frequently, Google are still awaiting some big court cases with the likes of teh EU especially over data privacy.

Microsoft's unspoken motto, until the end of the Steve Ballmer era, has been: "Dear consumers; we don't give damn about you." Nadella has done little to recover from it, although please bear in mind that "little" is relative; the predicament into which it has fallen is deep enough to accommodate the behemoth that is Microsoft.

Anyway, Mr. Bright, why would you write "a dangerous development for Microsoft"? Since Microsoft doesn't care about you, why do you care about Microsoft? Focus on whether it is a good development for you ... and me.

Because its a...wait for it...dangerous development for Microsoft? No company "cares" for you directly, and i'm not really sure what that even means.

Competition is good for you and me, and in a world without Microsoft there is just Google. That wouldn't be good for anybody.

So, you don't even care about your own interest as much you care for Microsoft's? You are self-less. I give you that.

I don't understand the narrative you are trying to construct - can you just spit it out instead these odd leading statements and intentional misinterpretations?

Up to the late nineties, wisdom dictated: if it doesn’t run Office, it’s not viable. Microsoft’s refusal to release Office on iOS and Android for so long in order to keep them from being serious Windows competitors cost them dearly: people now understand that running Office natively is not so important after all.

I think depending on the workplace, ChromeOS already is probably a cheaper way for businesses to be more productive, at least on the email/document generation side. That being said, it will be a loooong time before businesses shift in mass to a webapp based ecosystem. There is a lot of accumulated cruft requiring ancient code that at least on the backend will require some version of Windows. Additionally, I don't know about others, but Google Apps version of a spreadsheet has no where near the capability that Excel has, particularly for application integration and data manipulation. For that reason alone, I think Office365 is going to have long legs in the business world. What may happen however is for specialized apps, RDP into a virtual machine from a cheap Chromebook would be effective. I have very little experience with ChromeOS, how do they handle VPNs?

3 years ago, we bought one of our kids a decent notebook for grade 9. I put Office 365 on it since we already had a family plan for it.

As far as we can tell, she only uses Office when she's offline and then converts what she's been working on ASAP to Google Apps, partly because her school uses Chromebooks, but also because it's the lingua franca of her classmates. She can switch devices and still get to her work. She can share her work with her teachers, have classmates look over the work, work on group projects ... and there's no worry about licensing, incompatible file formats, and, well, a lot of the day to day hassles I lived through in the WordPerfect v. Word headaches of my youth.

I replaced the HD on her notebook with an SSD and was astonished at just how little she actually had on there. When I asked her (I thought I had muffed the disk clone or otherwise screwed something up and nuked her files), she said most of her work is saved in the cloud and makes backups of the important stuff on thumb drives. Over the last three years, she's only asked me once to login as an admin, and that was solely for changing some network settings so she could finish some kind of project on the wired network at school.

When she goes off to university, she's going with a Chromebook and her notebook as a backup ... just in case.

Microsoft's unspoken motto, until the end of the Steve Ballmer era, has been: "Dear consumers; we don't give damn about you." Nadella has done little to recover from it, although please bear in mind that "little" is relative; the predicament into which it has fallen is deep enough to accommodate the behemoth that is Microsoft.

Anyway, Mr. Bright, why would you write "a dangerous development for Microsoft"? Since Microsoft doesn't care about you, why do you care about Microsoft? Focus on whether it is a good development for you ... and me.

Because its a...wait for it...dangerous development for Microsoft? No company "cares" for you directly, and i'm not really sure what that even means.

Competition is good for you and me, and in a world without Microsoft there is just Google. That wouldn't be good for anybody.

So, you don't even care about your own interest as much you care for Microsoft's? You are self-less. I give you that.

It's too fucking early on a Saturday morning to deal with trollish shit like this. Good bye.

The issue with this premise is it ignores Google Apps being in flux, with changing interfaces and functions, and only best efforts uptime. Google has a way to go to offer dependable enterprise services.

As opposed to what? The outstanding unfluxiness of Office over the years?

I'm not saying Google Apps don't have issues (I work with a number of people who are prohibited from using them because of privacy concerns), but to pretend that it is some outlier for change is ridiculous.

The fact is the market for productivity applications has changed markedly. Online collaboration in support of a geographically distributed workforce is a must nowadays and to be honest Google Apps has made serious headway in making that possible.

The issue with this premise is it ignores Google Apps being in flux, with changing interfaces and functions, and only best efforts uptime. Google has a way to go to offer dependable enterprise services.

Funny. Replace ‘Google’ with ‘Office 365’ and the paragraph makes just as much sense.

Google Apps version of a spreadsheet has no where near the capability that Excel has, particularly for application integration and data manipulation. For that reason alone, I think Office365 is going to have long legs in the business world.

One of the consulting firms we've worked with uses the GSuite for their own business, but also have Office on their laptops specifically for Excel. That's still bad news for Microsoft as most of their IT spend is with google.

Finally, it also shows that Chrome OS's relatively clean-slate approach (sure, it's Linux underneath, but it's not really being pushed as a way of running traditional Linux software) has advantages that are appealing even to home users.

This is a pretty big deal for work related functions. Sure you can do a lot of personal stuff with ChromeOS (I love my Chromebook), and sure some Chromebooks can run android apps (I have Microsoft Office on my Chromebook), but many people need much more than that.

I work in a technical field and I can't put Python or R onto my Chromebook without jumping through a lot of hoops; and those are straight up supported on Linux, Windows or Mac. Microsoft Excel is better than than Google Sheets, but its real power comes from VBA, which as far as I know the android version can't support. I will grant you these are niche requirements, but what job functions aren't going to require some niche software?

As it stands now, my Chromebook is a fine machine for screwing around with, but if I need to do something more involved, I have to get on my Windows machine.

it's not just one lost license when someone gets a chromebook. It's one of those nose-under-the-tent things: pretty quickly, I realized I don't need Windows much at all ... So, now I'm thinking about replacing Windows everywhere in our home/small-business situation. We might keep one windows box around, but everything else is not going to be running Windows or any MS software.

Finally, it also shows that Chrome OS's relatively clean-slate approach (sure, it's Linux underneath, but it's not really being pushed as a way of running traditional Linux software) has advantages that are appealing even to home users.

This is a pretty big deal for work related functions. Sure you can do a lot of personal stuff with ChromeOS (I love my Chromebook), and sure some Chromebooks can run android apps (I have Microsoft Office on my Chromebook), but many people need much more than that.

I work in a technical field and I can't put Python or R onto my Chromebook without jumping through a lot of hoops; and those are straight up supported on Linux, Windows or Mac. Microsoft Excel is better than than Google Sheets, but its real power comes from VBA, which as far as I know the android version can't support. I will grant you these are niche requirements, but what job functions aren't going to require some niche software?

As it stands now, my Chromebook is a fine machine for screwing around with, but if I need to do something more involved, I have to get on my Windows machine.

in my world, javascript as an extension language for the spreadsheet >>> VBA ...

edit to add: and the rest of this argument is a classic pushed-upmarket argument. The new thing isn't good enough for the real hardcore use cases. Which leads to focus on those upmarket use cases, which gives space for the new thing to take over your old primary market.

There's plenty of money to be made in a retreat upmarket. But, it is a retreat...

My Pixelbook is a great no-hassle laptop that I prefer for at least half of my computer needs. I would use it for a lot more if Office365 or the Office apps for Android duplicated the Windows experience.

I see a very few students using chromebooks at my university. I see as many or more Macbooks. I don't see that many Windows laptops, which seems weird. But I don't actually see many laptops. I see phones, and I get a lot of papers written on phones.* I suspect that if you can't touch-type, there's not that much advantage to a laptop for a lot of of my students. And the phone is not only a tool they use a lot, it's also a status symbol. So it gets more emphasis than the laptop. I think phones threaten Microsoft, at least for undergraduates.

That said, I bought a cheap Samsung Chromebook 3 to use for work on a long vacation this summer, and I really liked the experience. I'm just a humanities professor, and it was vacation and a reduced workload, so I didn't need much. But I'm finding the experience adequate. Which is good enough that I'm still using it for teaching purposes because I really like the fact that if I drop it, or if it's stolen, I'm not really out that much, because there's nothing much on it. And I'm saying this as a faculty member at a uni with fairly crappy and unreliable wifi.

*A lot of our students are first-gen college students and/or from poor to working-class backgrounds; that's probably a big factor. I haven't polled classes, and I should; I suspect a lot of my students didn't have computers at home.

To me what sounds the alarm is the risk of whole generations of users not understanding key principles of an operative system. Caveat: I've *never* used Chrome OS. So I might be wrong here. Am I wrong in thinking of it as a very simplified OS? I guess it does have a file system, at least. Correct?

I have nothing agains simple interfaces, I'm just worried that this will breed multitudes of people not understanding the underlying principles.

do you think the current generation of computer users understands the key principles of an OS?

IT people, mostly, sure. But, the clerk at the store ringing you up on a POS terminal? The people in accounting? The people in shipping and receiving? The nurse entering your vitals into the doctor office workstation?

The OS will disappear into the IT weeds. People use computers to get their work done and that very rarely has any involvement with file systems, memory management, context switching costs, etc.

Most people should *not* need an understanding of the fundamental principles of OSs. If they do, that's a problem, not a good thing...

(Plus leaves plenty of room for those who do understand that to add value, i.e., stay employed.)

I see a very few students using chromebooks at my university. I see as many or more Macbooks. I don't see that many Windows laptops, which seems weird. But I don't actually see many laptops. I see phones, and I get a lot of papers written on phones.* I suspect that if you can't touch-type, there's not that much advantage to a laptop for a lot of of my students. And the phone is not only a tool they use a lot, it's also a status symbol. So it gets more emphasis than the laptop. I think phones threaten Microsoft, at least for undergraduates.

That said, I bought a cheap Samsung Chromebook 3 to use for work on a long vacation this summer, and I really liked the experience. I'm just a humanities professor, and it was vacation and a reduced workload, so I didn't need much. But I'm finding the experience adequate. Which is good enough that I'm still using it for teaching purposes because I really like the fact that if I drop it, or if it's stolen, I'm not really out that much, because there's nothing much on it. And I'm saying this as a faculty member at a uni with fairly crappy and unreliable wifi.

*A lot of our students are first-gen college students and/or from poor to working-class backgrounds; that's probably a big factor. I haven't polled classes, and I should; I suspect a lot of my students didn't have computers at home.

EDIT: typo clean-up

same thing at the Univ I most recently worked at: not all that many laptops, a lot of phones and ipads which benefit from the status halo, hardly any chromebooks.

But, the high schoolers I know all (100%) use gdocs rather than MS Office. And a good number of them have school issued chromebooks. This seems pretty recent. So, I'd expect at least some of them to carry their chromebook usage forward as they go to college ...

To me what sounds the alarm is the risk of whole generations of users not understanding key principles of an operative system.

How is that different from now? I'm an IT guy, and I do know these principles, but my [insert any family member here] uses Windows and I'm sure they don't. To put it in Apple's terms, "it just works".

And we're moving to an era of computers that just work, no deep knowledge required. You buy it, open it, use your Google/Apple account, it syncs everything, and you can keep on using it. That's iOS, Android and now chromebooks for you.

Personally I don't see any realistic threat to Microsoft from Chromebooks.

Everyone here who's said Chrome is as good as windows only seems to need the absolute bare minimum of software and functionality; they say that Google Docs is great but don't stop for a second to wonder how many real people can just get by using a word processor that's running in a browser.

It seems to be either non-technical undergraduate students or those who's job is something other than doing actual paperwork that like Chrome OS. And good for them. If it works for them by all means they should use it. But stop for a second and think about the modern workplace. Every department has unique software packages that it uses; from Sage to Dynamics there is a whole lot of stuff there that simply doesn't exist on Chrome OS and likely never will.

Even as we've become more Cloud focused, we are a very long way from being able to run a fully fledged application in a web browser. Even for companies that have hurled a lot of resources at truely 'as a service' software, the version you log into via a browser is vastly worse than the version that runs as an actual application.

ChromeOS is ok, but it's not a complete OS with complete support and functionality in the way that Windows is. It is lacking in specific ways that makes it much much less desirable for most grown ups who have to do any amount of reasonably in depth work.

And, quite aside from anything else, Microsoft is specifically aiming at the low-cost, low-complexity market at the moment. They are working on their own offerings for education and other low capability markets. Microsoft isn't going anywhere.